Stuff About Cars

Oddly, perhaps, for a bloke who writes a blog about cars, I have no real clue how the blasted things work. Oh, I can do the basic things like filling the tank with petrol, filling the screenwash bottle, changing a wheel, opening the bonnet and scratching my head…

At the moment my car is doing that thing that I so often hear cars doing - usually just as they start or pull away - namely emitting a kind of screech or squeal. Instinct suggests it is a clutch or brakes thing. In the case of my car, turning off the engine and restarting gets rid of it, and usually it will go off shortly after I pull away, anyhow.

Bloody annoying though - and even more annoying if it turns out to be something disastrously expensive that needs urgent attention.

Does anyone have an idea what it might be?

Yep, here’s wishing you a great 2007.

Mine nearly got off to a dramatic start. I came out of the house on the morning of New Year’s Eve to find a hefty tree branch lying on the ground about a metre away from my car.

Actually, I must be an idiot to park where I do. In spring and summer the birds help themselves to the all the local berries, and then deposit their multi-coloured droppings all over the car. In blustery autumn and winter the wind either covers the car in dead leaves or, as I recently saw, has a good try at hurling more substantial bits of tree in its direction.

Yep, the heading of this post is serious.

Don’t get me wrong, drinking and driving is bloody dangerous, but at least the people who do it are usually aware of what they are doing, and they try to drive as carefully as they can - even if it is only to avoid getting pulled over.

What I think is as big a hazard (and I know the authorities have identified it as such), is driving when tired. I recently drove on the M4 down to Bristol, and TWICE was nearly swiped by cars swerving madly across the road. The first one was drifting badly, when a van sounded its horn to wake the guy up and he swerved about a bit with the shock of it.

The second bloke nearly drifted right into my car and I could SEE his eyes closing - so I beeped at him, and then he did the sudden wake up thing. He then caught up with me again, and rubbed his eyes in a pantomime demo of tiredness by way of apology.

It’s dangerous and annoying, but it’s very hard to criticise, because I’ve done it myself. What makes it so dangerous is that, unlike when you’ve had a couple of beers, you may be quite unaware that you’re not in a good state to drive until it’s too late.

Once or twice I have felt fine and not realised how tired I was until my tyres bounced off the kerb and scared me back to wakefulness.

(Here’s an adapted version of an article I wrote for syndication…)

Although we don’t like to admit it, the British are by no means the hardiest of people and it only takes a flake or two of snow to get that legendary stiff upper lip trembling. Scottish people are possibly the exception; they deal with snow far more often than the rest of us, and thus remain unfazed by the occasional flurry. For most of the UK, however, winter can be a time of traffic chaos.

In recent years we have seen snowfall render many roads impassable. With the growing number of cars on the roads, stranded and abandoned vehicles can compound the situation by preventing snowploughs and gritting trucks from clearing affected routes. The media have covered these episodes quite thoroughly, and the picture painted is one of general unpreparedness.

This lack of preparation is understandable. The UK nestles comfortably in a temperate zone where extremes of weather are rare compared to those seen at other latitudes. Nevertheless, sudden bad weather does happen here, and can cause major inconvenience and, sometimes, even real danger.

It is sensible for the motorist to take at least basic precautions against the possibility of being stranded in snow. This is especially true of those whose journeys take them on motorways, or into sparsely populated rural areas where assistance may be hard to find.

The first thing to do is to make sure that your vehicle is ready for the winter. Get antifreeze checked, and make sure that screen wash reservoirs are charged with a strong enough solution to resist freezing. Check tyres and brake fluid. This would also be a good time to get any heater faults checked out. It’s also wise to keep your fuel tank well topped up, as your fuel provides the heat as well as the propulsion for your car.

Slushy winter roads can make a real mess of your car, so you may want to give your door mirrors and number plates a wipe over a bit more often when the weather is bad. Grubby number plates in particular can result in unwelcome attention from the police, delaying your journey even more.

At times of bad weather, especially if travelling through areas where mobile phone signals may be weak, it is a good idea to let people know of your travel plans, as well as your estimated times of arrival at your destinations.

The rest of the precautions are mostly a matter of stocking the back of your car with some common-sense supplies. The following list is a pretty comprehensive one, and you may have neither the space nor the need for everything on it. That said, the more of these items you carry with you, the more prepared you will be for the unexpected.

¨ Emergency fuel can (full)

¨ Blanket(s)

¨ Bottle of water

¨ High Calorie food (chocolate, cereal bars)

¨ Flashlight

¨ Spare flashlight batteries/bulbs

¨ Shovel

¨ In-car mobile phone charger

¨ Sturdy, water resistant shoes or boots

¨ Waterproof coat with hood

¨ Hat and gloves (body heat is lost very rapidly through extremities)

¨ Additional clothing (dry socks, extra sweater)

If the worst happens and your car does get stranded due to ice and snow, it is best to think very carefully before leaving the vehicle, especially at night when darkness and minimum temperatures mean that conditions are at their worst. It is, perhaps, less dangerous in town, but in more remote rural areas it may be best to remain with your vehicle unless you have a clear, achievable destination in mind which you are sure you can reach on foot.

Obviously, every situation is unique and the advice given above, while sound, may not always be the best way to proceed. This information is intended to highlight options that you may wish to consider when preparing for winter driving, and I cannot accept liability for mishap arising through the reader deciding freely to follow the advice in this article.

Or, more accurately, RC Day - Road Closure Day.

Yep, I fully expect to get home this evening to find that the threatened closure of my road for maintenance is underway.

That’s fair enough, the road is crumbling, pot-holed and prone to flooding. It’s good that they’re going to fix it up a little - although I have to say, if they didn’t allow buses and flippin’ great articulated lorries down there, it wouldn’t be so knackered. Oh well.

I tell you one thing, though. As they haven’t told us which parts are being closed, if I get back on my usual route and find I have to take some ludicrously convoluted detour, there’s going to be trouble.

A press release from Regtransfers.co.uk came out today.

This is worth a look for any of you who own or operate a website. Good, free, regularly refreshed content is not something to be sniffed at:

———————————-

Welcome Return for Free Motoring News

The motoring newsfeed offered free to website owners and webmasters by personalised number plates specialists www.regtransfers.co.uk suffered misuse by shady website operators earlier this year, and the company reluctantly had to stop offering the service. However, a solution to the problem has been found, and the free newsfeed facility is once again available for anyone wishing to add quality motoring content to any general audience website.

A Regtransfers.co.uk spokesman said: “Our motoring newsfeed is available to anyone who wishes to request it, provided that they conform to the terms and conditions under which we supply the service. One of those conditions is that the content we provide should not be used on pornographic sites, hate sites, casino sites, pharmacy sites and so on. Sadly many people were using the automatic sign-up process to put our newsfeed on sites we considered unsuitable.”

The problem has now been solved. After some experimental technical tinkering behind the scenes, there is now a screening process to ensure that objectionable sites do not use the service.

“We’re delighted to be able to offer good quality, regularly updated content to decent websites,” the spokesman said. “We hope it’ll be of benefit to many site owners and their visitors.”

The Regtransfers.co.uk free motoring newsfeed allows the user to choose how many headlines are displayed on their website. The headlines can also be styled to fit in with each website’s livery or theme. To get your free newsfeed simply go to http://www.regtransfers.co.uk/rss/content_add.asp.

…It must be.

Not only were the traffic queues this morning the worst I have seen, but the road-fairies have magically materialised a sign in my road saying that it will be closed for several days from the 15th of this month.

Goodness knows what’s with the traffic flowing (or, more accurately, failing to flow) into Luton from the Hitchin direction. There are three main ways to get into Luton town centre once one arrives from Hitchin. For the last couple of weeks, all these routes have been packed solid with barely moving traffic. I have no idea why.

Problems on the nearby M1 do tend to impact the traffic situation in Luton and Dunstable to an extent, but from what I have seen, the motorway has been no worse than usual during this time. I can only guess that one or more sets of roadworks is throwing everything into chaos… but I can’t figure out where.

No doubt the percentage of my life that I waste in the car will increase significantly this week. I know you are all eager to see the revised stats for in-car life wastage, so I’ll try to post new results when I have a clearer idea of how the week is going to pan out.

I mentioned the sign that has appeared in my road, didn’t I? What I want to know is why I haven’t been given any more information about the closure of the road and what it’s going to mean in practical terms. There are about 15 - 20 houses in the hamlet, all of which are accessed by the road which will apparently be closed. No one I have spoken to has had any notification through their door. We don’t even know which end of the road will be affected, and that makes a big difference as closure of one end will mean a detour adding 2 miles to the daily journey to work - and that’s before I even get to join the huge queue in Luton.

Not a good start to the week, and I rather expect things to go downhill from here…

This lunchtime I found myself listening to a BBC Radio 4 phone-in on the subject of the government’s strategy to combat road congestion. Now, I’ve not looked into this in great detail and I only listened to a few minutes of the programme - in fact, I’m almost completely uninformed and really have no right to an opinion on the matter, due to my ignorance.

But that never stopped me before, and it isn’t going to stop me now.

Now, I do accept that something needs to be done about traffic congestion. I also believe that something needs to be done about the effect of motor vehicles on the environment. However, judging (solely) by what I heard on the radio, one of the main things that the government is planning to introduce is a pay-as-you-go/toll road approach. At first sight, the idea doesn’t seem too outrageous, but when you think it through there are shortcomings that would need to be addressed if it were to work.

For a start, there would need to be different tariffs for different vehicles. Most of the criticism we hear is, quite rightly, aimed at large vehicles that burn a lot of fuel. Naturally these should pay more.

How much is the red-tape and paperwork going to cost? Will any of the money raised go back into traffic schemes and road maintenance?

I think there should be an additional tax on fuel. That would definitely hit the big engines harder. I can’t help thinking that whatever approach they do adopt will end up having minimal impact on the wealthy, and that it’ll end up clobbering ordinary working people hardest.

The way government and big business has shaped our communities has to bear much of the blame for the traffic problems we see today. Over the last 30 years - or more - they have gradually done away with local shops, local hospitals and schools, post offices etc. We no longer have all the essential services near where we live, so we have to drive more.

And what about privacy and civil rights issues arising from what they are currently thinking of doing? From what I heard, they are talking about fitting all cars with transponders. In effect, bugging your car with a device that will track and record your every movement.

Imagine if the wife got hold of that data… The old faithful claim of “I worked late” isn’t going to hold water if she can prove that you were down the pub with your mates, is it?
Now, I for one would resist that kind of intrusion. It’s not that I go anywhere dreadfully subversive - or even interesting - it’s the sheer erosion of privacy, autonomy and freedom that I find unacceptable. Another step in an Orwellian direction.

I wonder if they’ll build one of those bugs into my ID card when they force me to have one of those too.

This was the worst day so far this year for traffic queues on the way to the office. I did that foolish thing that all sensible people know is absolutely pointless: I gave up queueing, U-turned, and went the alternative route.

Which had an even bigger queue.

After waiting 5 minutes for some movement, I did the same thing again. I know, I thought, this next route I have in mind is pretty obscure - it’s bound to be less crowded…

No, of course it wasn’t. It was more crowded. Everyone had thought the same as me.

What really pissed me off was the realisation that, had I stayed in the orginal queue, I would have made it through the congestion by now. Why do I always do that? It’s not as if I don’t know what to expect - I do. But I still do it.

I have to pop into the supermarket on the way home, there are a few things I have to pick up. I’d rather not - the shops are such a pain at this time of year - but we really do need these things.

But I know what’s going to happen, you know. I’ll queue with my purchases, tapping my foot and sighing impatiently. Then I’ll notice that the queue at the next till is moving more quickly, so I’ll change queues…

This morning’s grumble is not strictly car-related, although it is prompted by seeing something in a car this morning.

I thought things were off to a good start. I left home 15 minutes earlier than I did yesterday and managed to miss quite a bit of the queue that drove me mad yesterday morning. So, I was a bit earlier, and it seems that one of the schools was closed for some reason, which also reduced the volume of cars milling aimlessly around the area. So, there I was, calm, content - almost serene.

Then I noticed the rear shelf of the saloon in front. Santa was standing on it. More specifically, a foot-tall Santa figurine was standing there, amongst some cotton wool snow and tinsel. I rolled my eyes, and sighed. Here we go, I thought. Oh well, at least this bloke waited until December to start assaulting me with his inane seasonal garbage.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas, but I only love it at Christmas. My window of seasonal tolerance and goodwill opens about two weeks before The Day and closes on Twelfth Night. Outside of that period, I consider anything Christmassy to be dissipating and devaluing the special quality of the season.

Still, I thought. This isn’t too bad, if a bit tacky.

I had just finished congratulating myself on my restraint and tolerance, when Santa dropped his strides, bent over, and mooned at me with an glowing red arse.

That does it. When I get home I’m going to break out the seasonal baseball bat.

Ho ho bloody ho.